Snap Ads: Is Snap serious about social media advertising?

Snapchat owner Snap has been busy in recent months. Snap recently unveiled a host of new social media advertising features. Post IPO has been tough for Snap. The share price has fallen as markets worry about its ability to make money. Despite this the brand has opened up Snap Ads to smaller budget brands. There’s been plenty of other developments too such as the launch of its advertiser self-publishing platform. Does this mean Snap is serious about social media advertising?

Snap Ads: entry level advertisers welcome

Until recently Snapchat advertisers were usually larger brands. This shouldn’t be a surprise. Snapchat Sponsored Lenses cost over £450,000 per day. Snapchat Direct Stories too required an investment of $50,000. Clearly at these price points, small and medium sized social media advertisers would have been put off the platform.

The good news is that Snap Ads require far less spend. Brands can run full screen video ads via Snap Ads for $3,000 per month. This puts its audience in reach of far more brands. And it should see more advertisers come to the platform.

Ads Manager: Snap Ads management simplified

Equally important has been the recent launch of Snap’s own Ad Manager which lets advertisers set-up and manage their own campaigns. This is a big step forward especially for smaller advertisers who want more control and the flexibility to run their own campaigns.

Ad Manager looks like it’s fairly straightforward to use. The structure of ads will be familiar to users of Facebook’s ad tools. Business set-up a campaign with the broad objectives.

Snap Ads: The campaign objectives

As well as specifying the objectives, the campaign’s element also contains the schedule. Next step is the Ad Sets where budgets and audience are specified. Then its the ads themselves. From a cursory glance the Snap Ads Ad Manager system looks very easy to use.

Audience Options

Snap’s tools let advertisers choose by a range of criteria. Businesses can target by country as well as drilling down into zip/post codes, regions or towns/cities. These regional/town options will be a real benefit to smaller businesses.

There’s a series of age groups too. Brands can select any age or filter by 13 – 17; 18 – 20; 21 – 24; 25 – 34 or 35+. The bands reflect Snapchat’s young audience but provide flexibility. The ability to target 21+ is very useful for alcohol brands as this should help ensure campaigns tick the CAP boxes (see our earlier post here).

Once an advertiser has chosen location, age and gender there are more sophisticated options. These include language, lifestyle interests, shopping habits and TV viewing.

Snapchat is getting interesting for advertisers

Lower-spend Snap Ads and a self-service Ads Manager are welcome tools from Snap. Snapchat’s young audience is worth targeting especially as many of its users can’t be reached on other social networks. With upwards of 14.8 million UK users, this means there’s a sizeable audience to be reached via Snap Ads.

This alone makes it a platform that brands will want to use. Lowering the spend level for Snap Ads should see many smaller brands using it to reach younger consumers. The self-service management tool is also a welcome step too from Snap along with more focus on metrics. Will Snap Ads reverse Snap’s fortunes? It’s too early to tell. However, with these changes Snap has shown its serious about social media advertising.